Page 6

MIA

My consciousness comes back in bits and pieces. Slowly, I become aware of the pounding headache in my skull, the awkward position of my body, the burning sensation around my abused wrists.

Ropes, I realize. I’ve been tied up.

By the time I’ve opened my eyes again, I can’t place a single thing I see.

Old, faded wallpaper, with burned black holes scattered every which way. Dark mahogany door frames, coated in a thick layer of dust. A long table, flipped on a white tablecloth stained with… wine? Sauce? I can’t really tell.

It tugs at me for some reason I can’t quite decipher. This abandoned room, this quiet house. I’ve never been here, I’m certain of that. And yet, somehow, I feel like I know it.

“Had a nice nap, printsessa ?”

That voice.

My head snaps to the side. “You.”

A man steps out of the shadows. No, not a man— that man. The man with the eyepatch.

“Me.” He gestures theatrically towards himself. “I’m so touched you remember.”

How could I ever forget?

The memory of his hands on me sends a shiver down my spine. My heart starts pounding, remembering how it felt to be held by those vicious arms, trapped without any chance of escape. The cold grip of chloroform, seeping slowly into me, turning my body into dead weight.

Dead. That’s what I should be now, right? Dead, buried, a corpse to throw at Yulian’s feet. Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it?

Yulian. I should be furious with him for dragging me into his shit again. For putting me and my kid in danger, again, even after I’ve walked away.

But somehow, all my rage turns to the man in front of me. Because Yulian may be an asshole, but this fucker is worse.

This is the man who killed Yulian’s family.

And he will get no love from me.

“Let me go.”

“Now, where would be the fun in that?”

I yank against the bindings, but can’t get free. My wrists howl with pain, already bruised by Brad’s daily death grips. With every pull, the ropes bite into my skin harder.

The man tuts. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’m pretty good at sailor’s knots. A lifesaving skill, let me tell you.”

“Your life won’t be worth shit once Yulian finds out what you did.” I spit out those words like poisonous darts. “He’ll end you. For real.”

“You’ve said that before, printsessa. But how sure can you really be that he’ll come for you?”

My confidence wavers. After seeing Yulian with Brad, having what was left of my faith shaken and shattered, I’ve already gotten proof aplenty he’s not the man I believed him to be. The Yulian I thought I knew would have come for me.

But this Yulian? The one who lied to me, used me as bait, brought me right back on Brad’s doorstep?

Suddenly, I don’t know anything anymore.

But I have a baby inside me. I have another kid waiting for me, a son who needs me. And call me crazy, but I’m not quite ready to kick it just yet.

So I’ll have to save myself.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What? Printsessa? ”

“Yes. That’s not my name.”

“Right. My apologies, Euphemia.”

The sound of my old name grates, but I don’t let it get to me. “I’d return the favor, but I haven’t the faintest idea who you are.”

The man’s lips quirk. “Your boyfriend didn’t tell you?”

“You might have noticed we broke up.”

“I did. Such a shame.” He kicks a piece of debris as he takes a turn around the room.

His walk is slow, deliberate, with a slight limp in his left leg.

I make a mental note of that—any weakness matters, even the smallest one.

“But if I know my best friend, he’s still attached.

He always had that problem, you see—a heart too big for his own good. ”

I freeze. “Best friend?”

“Oh, sure. We were thick as thieves.” He points at his scar. “It’s why he gave me this. So I’d never forget him. And believe me, I haven’t.”

I can’t wrap my head around what he’s saying. Yulian… he used to be friends with the guy who slaughtered his family?

Best friends, even?

“You’re lying,” I accuse. “Yulian would never be your friend.”

“Want me to get him on the phone?” He pulls mine out of his pocket, taunting me with it. “Then you can ask him all you want about dear old Desya Bogdanov. That’d be me, by the way.”

I roll the name on my tongue. There’s some familiarity to it, but I’m pretty sure Yulian never mentioned it. Every word he ever said to me about his family was like pulling teeth—a slow, excruciating affair. The only names he ever gave me were Kira and Alina.

And here, right now, is their killer.

Wait. Kira.

An idea forms in my head. A crazy, dangerous idea, but what part of this isn’t?

I straighten up in my chair. “Wanna know how I know you’re lying?”

“Please. I’d love that.”

“Yulian told me about his best friend,” I spit. “Her name was Kira.”

Desya’s face darkens on the spot. His little smirk shatters like glass, replaced by a snarl that’s more animal than human.

He lunges for me. His scarred hands grab the armrests at each side of me, his knuckles white as death. “Kira was a nobody,” he growls. “A cheap girl from a cheap family.”

There. He’s lost it now. All his calm, all his poise—gone. Just like I wanted. “And yet, he loved her more than you.”

“Mind your tongue, printsessa. There’s nothing you can do for me that your cold, dead body won’t accomplish just as easily.”

“If that were true, you’d have killed me already.”

I can see it on his face—how close he is to hitting me. One thing about living with an abusive boyfriend? You become a quick study in psychology. You start analyzing the moods of the men around you, walking on eggshells, learning exactly what not to say or do to set them off.

But it works just as well in reverse.

And right now, I really need Desya to hit me.

C’mon. Do it, you bastard. My eyes flit to the shard of glass on the floor to my left, nice and big and sharp, next to the shattered window. If I could get my hands on it, I could use to cut myself free. Do it. Make me fall. Knock me right over that way.

His left hand twitches at his side. I noticed when he smoked—that’s his dominant hand. Sure, he could slap me open-palmed, send me sprawling on the right, but one thing I’ve learned about men like him? They like to make it hurt.

And his knuckles look like they’d love to meet my face.

But then, his face suddenly relaxes. He steps away, his rage bleeding out. Like a summer storm—there one second, gone the next.

“You’re right. I would, indeed, prefer you alive.”

Then he draws back.

Shit.

I try not to let my disappointment show. But Desya must see something, because he starts laughing, soft and childish. It’s such a jarring contrast from earlier, it makes me shudder from head to toe.

“Oh, I see. You were taunting me on purpose. Nice try, printsessa, but it won’t work. If there’s one thing I’ve got going on for me, it’s patience.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’ll admit, I can get a little hotheaded from time to time. But how couldn’t I? You’re just like her.”

I blink. “What?”

“Kira.” He spreads his arms wide. “She was just like that, too. Cunning, calculating, vicious. Always one step ahead of everybody else. That is, until she wasn’t.”

“You mean, until you murdered her.”

“Eh, murder, schmurder.” He shrugs. “Honestly, I always regretted that I wasn't there to pull the trigger on her. But they tell me she screamed.” His smirk turns wicked. “She died like a dog, right here.”

Wait. What?

My eyes go to the table again. Overturned, full of holes—and stained a dark brown that must’ve been red at some point. Not sauce, I don’t think. Belatedly, I realize exactly where this man took me.

“This is Yulian’s house,” I whisper. “This is where they died.”

Desya grins, all teeth. “Couldn’t have been easier. He loved complaining to me. Wouldn’t shut up about this stupid dinner and the embarrassment of his parents insisting on Kira being there. They always thought he’d wind up with her, eventually. I knew they were right.”

“They were friends, ” I snarl. “Yulian told me he’d never had plans to marry her. Never.”

“Well, he lied.”

“He didn’t.”

“Yes, he fucking did!” There it is again: a hot, quick burst of rage, gone as fast as it came. “But it’s fine. You see, he lied to me, too. That’s why she had to go. Why they all had to go.”

It dawns on me, then—the horror of what went down here twenty years ago. “You killed them because… you were jealous?”

“Technically, Prizrak killed them.”

“But you gave the order.”

He shrugs. “Guilty as charged.”

I’m shaking now, overcome with rage and regret on Yulian’s behalf. Is this the kind of weight Yulian has been carrying around all his life? Twenty years of guilt, of thinking he’s the reason his whole family got murdered?

“How could you?” I croak. “How could you do that to your own friend?”

His expression turns unreadable. “I did what I had to do.”

“No. You did it because you wanted to.”

“He was going to get married. He was going to leave me behind.”

“So you had his whole family murdered?!”

“YES!” he yells. “That’s what happens to fucking traitors!”

He clutches his scar. The T-shape twitches with the muscles underneath, turning his face into a grotesque spectacle.

I thought I could reason with this man. That I could find out what he wanted or outsmart him somehow. But there’s no reasoning with crazy. And Desya Bogdanov is, without question, insane.

As if on cue, he grins again. He reminds me of those theater masks—comedy and tragedy. One smiling, one crying.

Right now, he’s half of both.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “None of that matters. It’s all in the past.”

“Not for him.”

“No,” he concedes. “After today, it won’t be.”

Then he pulls out a knife.

“Last chance to be useful, printsessa. ” He steps closer, tips my chin with the edge of the blade. “Come work for me. Be my woman on the inside. Together, we’ll make Yulian pay for all he did to us.”

The way he says us makes me recoil with nausea. Like he thinks we’re the same. Like we’ve both been scorned, abandoned, and because of that, we’re entitled to ripping his life apart.

Like I’d ever want to.

“If you won’t do it,” he adds, voice taking on a dangerous note, “then I’ll just have to do to you what I did to that bitch Kira. And I won’t spare the little Lozhkin inside you, either.”

My blood goes cold. “It’s not?—”

“Oh, it is,” he croons. “Don’t lie to me, Euphemia. I’ve been watching you both for longer than you’d care to know. You never let that pathetic blondie touch you, even after you moved back in with him. Of course, that’s discounting the other little bastard you whelped.”

“You leave my son out of this,” I cry out. “He’s innocent.”

“No one is ever innocent.” The point of the blade dips into my throat. It draws a single, perfect drop of blood. I watch it slide down the edge of the knife, then fall, joining the dry stains on the hardwood. “Time to choose, Euphemia. Me or him.”

I think back to all the lies Yulian told me. To his betrayal, the way it still burns in my heart. I think back to all the happiness I thought we had, everything he threw away, everything he said he’d give me and my son: a home, a life, a family.

I think back to Brad, too. His cruel words, his crueler fists. I think about how it’s Yulian’s fault that he found me, Yulian’s fault that I’m back with him, Yulian’s fault that my son won’t speak to me. That he’s had to learn what a terrible man he comes from.

I think.

Then I spit in Desya’s face.

He startles back. The knife drops from my throat as he wipes at his cheek with the back of his hand.

“I will never betray him,” I hiss. “And I will never, ever, choose you.”

Desya’s expression twists. Anger, cold and deep. “Wrong call,” he warns. “And for that little stunt, I’ll make it hurt.”

Tears gather in my eyes. Not from regret—there was never any other choice. But from sadness.

Sadness, for the son I’m about to leave motherless.

Sadness, for the baby that will never have a chance to be born.

Sadness, for the family I haven’t seen in five years and never will again. For my friends, my coworkers, all the people I’ve ever loved.

And for Yulian, too.

I close my eyes. Tears stream down my cheeks, warm and salty and inevitable.

I’m sorry, Eli.

I’m sorry, baby.

I’m sorry, everyone.

Then, as the tip of the knife grazes my throat again…

“I’m sorry, Yulian,” I whisper.

“Don’t be.”

My eyes snap open. It’s his voice. His voice.

A gun cocks. Desya twists around. The cold edge of his knife leaves my skin untouched.

Then I see him.

Tall. Strong. Perfect.

And absolutely fucking furious.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch her,” he snarls. “She’s mine. ”